


Wheels Keep Turning

by Blakdawn



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen, Peggy Sue
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-19
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-16 00:49:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7245565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blakdawn/pseuds/Blakdawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Team RWBY has been captured for unknown, but presumably nefarious, purposes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue Chapter One 'Myopia'

It was at time likes these, reflected the Black Brother, that he hated spy work. Not the actual work, the tracking of an enemy, the gradual revelation of information, of patterns and habits, building up a picture and using it to execute a plan. That was the fun part, the part that made him get up in a morning.

No, he hated spy work because all information was 'Need to know', and with very few exceptions his boss never thought he needed to know much of anything. Oh, he understood the reasoning, he, and his men, went out and did field work, that made them liable to be captured, and possibly have information extracted from them. Therefore keeping information from them was a simple, but effective, means of keeping information from enemies, 'allies' and anyone else who might attempt to get information from them.

This was always something he reflected on during a job, but this one made these well known thoughts more apparent than usual. His orders were the usual terse, unemotional and uncompromising orders

'Identify and extract Yang Xiao Long to Command Post 87-D'

But having identified and built up a picture of the ex-huntress-in-training, he was at a loss to explain why.

Simply put, she was mess, both physiologically and psychologically, she was missing her right arm, and his combat psychologist informed him that based on what she had seen, Xiao Long was most likely depressed, though without spending time with Xiao Long, she was in no position to offer a firm diagnosis.

Either way she was not the brash, combative brawler he had seen in the background material he had been sent. she was broken, for lack of a better word, she had been into the furnace and forge of battle and rather than tempering her, it had shattered her.

Regardless of his opinion, his orders were absolute, find Xiao Long and extract her. Given the isolation of the property she inhabited there would be few or no neighbors to intervene, and she was in no position to resist, however good she was as a huntress, she was missing her right arm, and that would throw anyone off balance, but as a brawler who relied so heavily on letting her fists do the talking, it would take time for her to regain even half the skill she previously had, and that was with rigorous training. Given that she remained in bed most days, that had obviously not happened.

If it had only been Xiao Long, he and his men would have had few difficulties, unfortunately it was not so, Taiyang, her father remained in the house to be with her. He knew of Taiyang, and if he could keep up with Summer Rose, Qrow Branwen and Raven Branwen, then he was a dangerous opponent.

Still regardless of his skill, he was one man, and one skilled at defeating grimm. As many arrogant huntsmen and huntresses had found out there is a great deal of difference between defeating grimm and defeating men. So the Black Brother was confident he and his men keep him occupied long enough to extract Xiao Long with minimal casualties.

But that wasn't the point, regardless of his skills, unless they were very lucky, they could not defeat him fast enough to stop him from having the chance of alerting others, and that simply would not do, not just from a professional pride standpoint, but it would also means the possibility that they would be intercepted and if Taiyang's reinforcements removed Xiao Long then he would have failed the mission, which was unacceptable, therefore he had to create a plan to remove Taiyang from the equation.

Hence why he was here, hidden in trees, about half a mile from Xaio Long's house, while another group riled up a small group of grimm, and a third group set fire to a small farm house about a mile or so down the road, hopefully this would be a sufficient distraction to a least get Taiyang out of the house and investigating.

“Bravo team, report,” the Black Brother spoke into his mask, knowing the computer would recognize who it was directed at and only transmit to bravo team.

“This is bravo team, we are in position, ready to engage,”

“confirmed bravo team, hold for engagement codes,” he had a quick glance around, once bravo team drove the grimm out of the forest charlie team would set fire to the farm house and both would withdraw immediately after their tasks were complete. If this failed to remove Taiyang from the house then they could regroup and plan, but he would rather this worked first time, a grimm attack and someone accidentally burning down their house while fleeing could be explained, but a rash of 'accidents' could prove the lead someone needs to put the pieces together. After all, the best results occur when the enemy is never even aware you exist.

“Bravo team, engage at your discretion,”

“confirmed, engaging,” the men he had with him, specifically the spotters, kept their monocular's trained on the house, waiting to see what, if anything, Taiyang would do.

For several minutes nothing happened, or rather, nothing out of the ordinary happened, then as smoke began to be visible from the kitchens window Taiyang began moving, rushing out of the kitchen, pausing only to get his weapon, before rushing upstairs, out of sight.

Then thirty seconds later he reappeared, without Xaio Long, and headed out in the direction of the fire. For twenty interminable seconds they kept watch to ensure he wasn't coming back, then the Black Brother waved forward the recon elements to do a close inspection.

The three men didn't, quite, run to the house, but they kept up a good pace, and reached it quickly, circling and checking for outside traps, then the leader radioed

“no sign of traps, ready to proceed to stage two,”

The Black Brother paused for a few seconds and considered, right now, if he ordered withdrawal, Taiyang would eventually return and be none the wiser, going forward would not be a deniable act, he would be committing himself. While in time critical situations a decision had to be made, in situations like these he always made time to consider his options and chances for success before moving in the open.

“Recele One proceed to stage two,”

“confirmed, proceeding,”

From here things would progress quickly, Recele One would breach the house, make there way to Xaio Longs room and tranquilize her, then remove her, a spare set of clothes and her weapons and go directly to the rendezvous point for extraction.

“we've breached and secured the lower level, proceeding to...shit, engaging,” suddenly a routine progress confirmation turned into a violent expression “Target has engaged us, we're pinned, requesting reinforcement”

“copy that, Recele One, hold for reinforcement,” the Black Brother then turned to his commander “pull back to the rendezvous point, I’ll extract the target and Recele one,”

his subordinate snapped his a quick salute, bringing his left hand to his right breast, but the Black Brother was already out, racing towards the house, pulling his pistol and butterfly knife out.

He'd been prepared for this, for his best laid plans to go horribly awry. This, thankfully, was a situation they had already considered, and as he kicked in the back door and threw himself at the opposite wall, he considered just how lucky he was that she was crippled, she must have reacted pretty much immediately after Recele One breached to engage them while they were still on the ground floor, so he needed every advantage he could get.

Then he focused himself, identify the target. Easy, he could hear her shotgun gauntlet as she fired at his pinned down team, there was just one wall between him and Xaio Long.

Second identify his allies, even easier

“Recele One, report position,”

“fuck...we're pinned down in the living room, she's blind firing from the dining room, we're keeping her honest, and she isn't moving much, likely pining us until Taiyang gets back,”

“confirmed, continue,”

“yes sir, continuing,”

third, create a plan of action, his men were holding her were she was, for now, but she was still free to move around the dining room, she'd be staying low, keeping as much cover between her and Recele One, her gauntlets didn't have a full auto setting, and she had far less ammunition, but all she had to do was pin them. There was a door between the dining room and the kitchen, but it was a ninety degree angle to the door between the living room and dining room, and therefore useless, as it would bring him directly into her line of fire, therefore he had to make his own entrance

Fourth: execute it.

“Recele One, suppressing fire, herd her away from the wall between the kitchen and dining room,”

“yes sir, suppressing fire,” the fire from Recele One, which had been post shots and the occasional burst, just to keep her honest, suddenly became a steady stream of fire, as they took turns firing on full auto.

Working quickly, the Black Brother removed a breaching charge and placed it against the wall and armed it.

“Recele One, prepare to hold fire on my mark,”

“yes sir, preparing to hold fire on your mark,” the Black Brother squeezed his butterfly knife causing the latch to pop open, he held his thumb over it took and deep breath and said

“mark,” at the same instant he pressed down on the latch, which acted as a detonator, causing the charge to detonate, while this would not cause the wall to explode, it did fatally weaken it. Therefore when he kicked it a second later the wall simply crumbled and fell, leaving a hole about man shaped for him to go through.

Exactly as its designers had intended.

Thus he was in a position to rush through the gap and into the grimm den, as it were, ready to engage his opponent...

And immediately fling himself to one side as Xaio Long fired her gauntlet shotgun at him, even without dust infused bullets he could feel the force. But taking advantage of his dive he went into a roll and sprung up at her right side, forcing her to turn and engage him in melee.

As it turns out, she was more than a little rusty, as a simply side step to his left, her right, dodged her first punch, and without her right arm and, more importantly, her gauntlet, she had no way of stopping him, therefore she brought her still outstretched fist around, but the Black Brother merely grabbed her arm and pushed her back, stepping forward as he did so, grabbing her collar and kneeing her in the groin, for a second she seemed almost surprised, as if she wasn't actually in pain. Then she staggered back, hitting the wall of the kitchen, so the Black Brother kicked her in the stomach, and when she simply vomited over his legs, he pulled out a syringe and pushed it into the artery on her neck, and depressed the plunger to inject the fast acting knockout drug.

“Recele One, move up and secure the target, them we move out, immediately,” The original plan had been to extract her, and plant evidence making it look like she ran away, however with the damage they had caused, that was no longer a viable option, so they would just extract her.

Once Xaio Long had been secured two of Recele One carried her, and then made there way, quickly, towards the forest and from there, towards the evac zone.

_I wonder if my sister had better luck with Schnee?_


	2. Prologue Chapter Two High Level Meetings

Matthias Roe looked up from, or more accurately, past, the numerous files he had open on his computers screen, which floated on his desk, and briefly considered making a joke about the Black Brother and the White Sister dragging four, tightly bound, conventionally attractive young woman into his office. Instead he merely waved at the four chairs that had been set out for this meeting and waited for them to be securely strapped in place.

As he waited he dismissed all the currently open files on his computer and opened the four profiles for the members of team RWBY, not to read, but simply for effect, to remind them that he knew a lot more about them, about the situation, than they did.

“Sir? They have been secured,” the Black Brother spoke quietly, but quite slowly, not a drawl, but...languid.

Roe nodded and waved his hand to the back, where both Brother and Sister took there places, his silent guardians, then he considered each of the women seated in front of him.

To the far left was Blake Belladonna, former terrorist and ex-member of the white fang, in fact one of Adam Taurus's most trusted operatives. Her capture had been easy, for she worked alone, and she had been taken when she was asleep. Now her head was lolled to the side and her ears occasionally flicked on top of her head. Her briefly studied her weapon Gambol Shroud, a pistol with a ribbon and a bladed sheath, by far the most...unfamiliar of the weapons. 

Next to her, snoring slightly was Ruby Rose, leader, or perhaps ex-leader, of Team RWBY, her capture had been the most fraught, and risked revealing the Black Brothers semblance, fortunately it had gone off without a hitch and now she, plus her weapons Crescent Rose a sniper scythe, a dangerous weapon in anyones hands, though for novices the one in danger was often themselves. Obviously based on Qrow's weapon, not surprising given that she was his niece, but with a far more useful secondary mode, having two melee weapons meant nothing when your opponent was a mile and half away, whereas a sniping rifle would at least let you return fire.

Next to her was Yang Xaio Long, rather than the traditional restraints, cuffed legs and arms plus a gag, they had instead opted for a body restraint with two bands going across her torso, in fact they had had to modify the original given her...generous bosom, as they could not fit the restraint across her chest. As well as a restraint for her remaining arm and both legs, while it was judged unlikely that she would cause problems, it was always better to be safe than to be sorry. Her capture, while not a complete success was at least acceptable and there were plenty of enemies team RWBY had made before that could conceivably kidnap her. Her weapons, Ember Cecilia, also sat on his desk directly in front of her, a combination of gauntlet and shotgun, not a common design and one that she had struggled to adapt to her current situation, but serviceable enough.

Finally Weiss Schnee was practically sitting at attention in her restraints, either a testament to her upbringing, or the restraints. Her capture had been the most public, but it was hardly as if the White Fang would not target the Schnee Dust Company heiress, so he had no doubts that the kidnapping would be traced back to them. Her weapon Myrtenaster, a revolver hilted rapier was the most traditional, a perhaps least individually dangerous weapon in the team, though she made up for it with her semblance.

As he considered each of them Matthias was waiting for the team to wake from their unnatural sleep, as soon as he saw Yang Xaio Long begin to move uncomfortably in her restraints he got up, and as expected of any criminal mastermind study the world outside the window in his office, with his back to them.

Matthias was fairly certain at least Yang Xaio Long was awake, the rest were also possibilities, so best to get on with his plan.

“I have always been fascinated by words, team RWBY, we use words so often, as our primary means of communication, that often we do not consider the power of words, of the ideas they represent. 

So often we believe that we control the words, and through shaping them, we may present thoughts, of both the corporeal and ethereal, to another; the transfer of information from one to another. But it is not so.

Words have power, they shape the giver as much, if not more, than the receiver. Take for example the words truth and lie, we speak of the truth do we not?

'I solemnly affirm and sincerely declare that the evidence I give shall be **the** truth, **the** whole truth and nothing but **the** truth'.

As if there was some great overarching, invisible truth, some plan that holds us all and everything else together, yet as I'm sure you can all tell me, what is self evident truth varies from person to person.

Yet at the same time we speak of a lie, an implicit plural, to the truths singular, why?” He turned to face them, all of them were awake, though not all were looking at him, Blake Belladonna seemed to be straining her senses, sharpening her hearing by closing her eyes. “because we feel we have to be part of something grater, do we not? The desire to be part of something larger, be it a family, a social group, a city, a nation. It is something that has been part being human, being faunus.”

Matthias sat back down in his chair, while the speech didn't have anything to do with his objectives here, he felt that pandering to his sense of theater was an acceptable distraction. He briefly glanced around the room at his men before coming to a decision

“Leave us, all of you, I will summon you when we are done here,” His men all drew to attention, bringing their left hands, in a fist, to their right breast's and then almost fully out at shoulder level, thumbs down, then they all disappeared into various side rooms.

When they were all gone he idly tapped some buttons on his terminal and the gags released themselves, falling on the floor. With the impediment gone all four began shouting at once, making it impossible to tell what any one of them was saying, instead Matthias simply sat back and let them shout themselves hoarse, when they all stopped he began

“Save your questions, threats, tantrums and interruptions, they will not make me change my mind. Instead let me explain as best I can.

Let us start at the beginning, my name is Matthias Roe, Chief Executive Officer and Head of Design at Roe Armament Industries, which I am sure that Miss Schnee has heard of, in any event that much is irrelevant, I have had you brought here on orders of another.”

“Cinder” Ruby gasped, Matthias threw her a quick glare

“What did I say about interruption, Miss Rose? In any event, no you were not brought here on Miss Fall's orders, if you were then I don't doubt all of you would have been liquidated. No you were brought here by another's orders.

Let me ask you a question, team RWBY, and this time I expect you to answer, if you could go back before you began this tumultuous year, would any of you do anything different?” he paused inviting comment

“I...yeah,” replied Yang Xaio Long, the rest of team RWBY all nodded

“As I thought, so what if I told you that you could go back, before this all began and try again,”

“What, time travel's impossible!” blurted out Weiss Schnee

“Ordinarily, yes. But this is no ordinary offer.”

“So who's doing the offering?” asked Blake Belladonna

“At last, miss Belladonna, a pertinent question, and I will answer thus, I do not know. Like you they came to me with an offer, not time travel, something else, and offered it to me, as they have done for many others.”

“What you desire,” said Weiss

“Close, miss Schnee, but not quite. I call them The One's Below, or TOB, but they have never not come through on their end of the bargain.”

“Maybe, but what do they want?” Yang Xaio Long “They aren't doing this out of the goodness of their heart.”

“From time to time, they contact me and give me instructions, such as you capture, and I carry them out, that is all, as far as I am aware.”

“How?” asked Ruby Rose

“How else? My scroll, a very specific one,” Matthias withdrew the modified scroll he received his orders on and showed it to them. Ruby looked at it closely, then nodded 

“Can we, can we talk about this, in private?” Matthias considered her request for a few seconds

“NOVA? Lock down all controls, level ten, except for the attention button,” NOVA, his virtual assistant, beeped in confirmation, he then stood “Just say 'attention', when your done.”

With that he walked out into his reception area, where both the Black Brother and the White Sister were waiting, they turned to face him as he walked out, but Matthias held out hand to forestall nay questions, and both turned back to what they were doing, the Black Brother leaned back against the wall, an ear bud in his right ear, blaring some song, slightly too quiet and slightly too tinny to make out, the White Sister returned to her reports, occasionally taking a drag from a cigarillo.

It must have been half an hour waiting before the door chimed, again Matthias held out a hand to forestall any questions and entered alone. Like he had left them all four were still bound to the chairs. Slowly he walked back around and seated himself

“Well?” he asked, Ruby Rose inhaled slightly before answering

“Yes,” 

“Good,” he pulled out four scrolls like the one he had shown them before and handed placed them on top of their various weapons

“So...what happens now?” asked Blake, to answer he pulled out another device, this one looking like a a box with various dials, he fiddled with it, turning knobs this way and that before turning his attention back to them.

“This,” he answered and pressed a small red button, and without fuss or bother all four of them, plus their weapons and scrolls simply vanished “NOVA? Send me a cup of tea.”


	3. Poisonous Friendships

_alone_

Blake had spent the month and half since she ran from Beacon alone, and now, when she was surrounded by White Fang, she felt more alone than ever.

Roe, or whoever it was that sent them here, had put her back to three days before the fateful dust train operation, when she had split with the White Fang. She had appeared, or moved, or whatever the verb was, while she was alone having a shower, presumably so she didn't blow the fact she was from the future immediately.

After a tense few minutes negotiating her way back to her tent in the camp she took stock of her situation, her scroll, her proper scroll, had confirmed that this was either an incredibly realistic illusion, still an option, or Roe had been telling the truth, so for now she played along and kept her eyes open for any inconsistencies that might mean she was still trapped.

Of course she still had to play the part, if she had been alone she would have gone and tried to find at least Ruby, or possibly Yang, to make sure they had all been put in this illusion or the past. Of course given that she was in the white fang camp she couldn't just sneak off, and even if she could it was days from civilization, too far to travel.

Even worse the dust train operation had already been agreed, and even if it wasn't her ticket to Beacon Academy and the rest of her team, she knew exactly what...Adam, what Adam, was planning, and she couldn't let him slaughter people simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No the operation had to go ahead.

Which brought her to her current location, right at the edge of camp gazing into the middle distance, while she had to go ahead with the operation, its true purpose was to obtain a large amount of dust that would, eventually, be used by Roman Torchwick in a failed attempt to kick start the battle of Beacon about 3 months too early While they did stop the attempt, it caused substantial property damage and overall was a disaster, only stopped by numerous long shots and lucky breaks. Therefore stopping, or at least slowing down, this plan would give buy them more time to stop Cinder Roman and…Adam, before a battle for Beacon took place.

She remembered the last time she had done this, nine months before, or three days in the future, depending on how she chose to look at the time line, the result had been a lot of destroyed robots and separating the dust cars form the rest of train, which, while not a complete success, had achieved the objectives. 

Blake took a deep breath, held it for a few second, then exhaled, she repeated this several times until she was calm, she was getting worked up about this, becoming more and more nervous. She had to think through this logically.

_What was...Adam's objective?_

_Get the Dust_

so the question became, how to stop...Adam getting the Dust, there was no dissuading him from actually attacking the train, so she had to deny him the Dust after the had breached and disabled the security. 

The simplest way is to destroy the Dust, Dust after all is very unstable and can explode if not handled properly, and while shooting the dust with Gambol Shroud would likely cause individual vials of Dust to explode, it would raise to many questions and take too long.

Then her mind wandered back to how the operation had finished, the giant Spider Mech had attacked them both just after they found the dust, and its weapons were very powerful. Assuming that it hit the dust containers, it would be a safe bet that they would explode, so all she had to do was lure it over to a container of Dust and then escape just after it fired, hopefully causing an entire pallet of dust to go up.

It wasn't a fool proof plan by any means, but it was better than nothing and would be open to modification as needed.

And that just left…

Adam.

The Goliath in the room, one she had been resolutely ignoring but no longer could. She knew that right now he considered them close friends, perhaps something more. That was the primary reason she had been picked for this mission, which presented a bit of a problem, she couldn't ignore him, much as she wanted to, she couldn't just hide from him, if he thought she was having second thoughts, he might pick someone else, someone who would be willing to derail the entire train, much as she hated him, for what he did, both to her and by extension, Yang, she didn't want the deaths of the people on the train on her either.

_Caught between a rock and a hard place_ she thought sardonically

Still all she had to do was get through this final meeting, which wouldn't be long, all the details had already been agreed, then actually do the mission. After that she would be free.

Free for him to chase after her, to throw all his power, and resources, at having back _his_ Blake, free for him to

_no, stop thinking like that_ she commanded herself, to little avail, she still felt an emptiness in her heart, just like before every fight, a small part of her still worried. She tried her best to ignore it

_just the meeting, then the mission_

_just the meeting, then the mission_

_just the meeting, then the mission_

She checked the time, five minutes till the meeting, took a final breath of free air, and rose from her perch and turned back to the camp, back to…

Adam.


End file.
